Issue 38: Marseille, from the old port
A city that does not care whether you like it, which is exactly why you will...
Marseille is not pretty. It is something better than pretty. It is alive, and it does not lower its voice for visitors.
The port
Start there, at eight, when the fishermen sell what they caught at five from trestle tables on the quay. Buy nothing, look at everything, and then walk up.
Le Panier
The old quarter above the port: stairs, washing, walls painted by people who did not ask. Get lost in it on purpose. It is small enough that lost lasts twenty minutes.
Lunch
Not bouillabaisse, unless you have booked and are paying for it. A sandwich from a stand by the port, eaten on the steps of the fish market, is the true Marseille lunch and costs four euros.
The afternoon
The 60 bus to Notre-Dame de la Garde, for the view, which is the whole city and the whole sea and the islands where they kept the Count of Monte Cristo. Then walk down, slowly, to the Corniche, and swim if it is warm and even if it is not.
Revised: the fish market moved fifty metres east in the summer, and the stand with the sandwiches moved with it.
One place, every Thursday
The letter, in your inbox, before it is on the site. Nothing else, ever.
Writes Signal from wherever he was last Thursday. Eleven years, sixty countries, one forty-litre bag.
Signal
A weekly travel letter: one place, one week, one opinion.